Hurts
Happiness

My dear friends, today I will talk to you about nonsense: yes, enough of reviewing with soul and passion the albums I love only to receive, if I'm lucky, one or two comments; today I will talk about something that truly disgusts me, and which I think will attract much more attention: Hurts, they are called, A Pain In The Ass, I call them. We have already discussed the 80s revival some time ago while talking about Blancmange, in case anyone noticed, so what is more typically eighties than a nice brand-new synth-pop duo? A cover that even a five-year-old child would sense as artificially plastic, hype galore, collaboration with the well-known dancer, lingerie model, and soap opera actress Kylie Minogue. "Daniel, let it go, you would waste fifty minutes of your life that no one can give back to you" said the wise one in me, but the adventurer in me countered: "Well, but if by chance it turns out to be something good, you would gain a new flag of quality modern pop; if it sucks... well, even Aldo Grasso had to watch Ventura and De Filippi's shows to write his critiques."

So, "Happiness" by Hurts is to music as "Quelli che il calcio" is to television. Plastic, plastic, and more plastic, two theatricals carefully directed by the record company without a hint of originality, of style, a pathetic copy of a thousand summaries. Listening to it from start to finish requires a real strong stomach: same grooves and electronic bases already heard and reheard, everything absolutely standard, predictable, flat, mellifluous, dull and cumbersome orchestrations, a less than mediocre singer. It's cheesy supermarket music, devoid of any intrinsic value. Singles like "Sunday" and "Better Than Love" are nothing more than today's standardized radio pop with prefabricated electronic bases, passed off as synth-pop, but the worst is in the ballads, which offer moments of pure horror where, besides the cheesy eighties rip-offs, you can clearly sense the influence of today's monstrosities like Coldplay and related riffraff, just think of "Blood, Tears & Gold", "Unspoken", "Stay": blasts of syrupy sweetness that also include "Devotion", where the illustrious guest Kylie Minogue adds her atrociously pointless voice, as if Theo Hutchcraft's wasn't already enough (so to speak). In theory, one of the defining traits of the old synth-pop would be the intelligent and original lyrics, often actually committed, needless to say, there is no trace of all this in "Happiness", just trivial love affairs and the like. Closing it all is the piano ballad "Water", which with a singer instead of a dead cat, would perhaps have been pleasant, but just to twist the knife in the wound, our heroes place a ghost track so simpering and affected as to be almost comical, but perhaps for some music$ critics"Verona" will turn out to be a sublime serenade.

In the end, some modest potential is in sight: the opener "Silver Lining", for example, seems to predict something good, a beautiful song with epic and very engaging atmospheres, a beautiful melody, excellent piano line, an appealing refrain, it is not a single, in an album from which no less than seven abominations were extracted, each worse than the last. Seriously, it hurts the heart to see two mediocre craftsmen like these receive over-the-top praises, awards galore from the paid press, and sell millions of copies while infinitely more talented artists are shamelessly snubbed. What to save from these A Pain... oops, no, I meant to say Hurts? Well, to be honest, there would be Theo Hutchcraft's pretty face, and then... um... and then, something, maybe there is, but maybe, or maybe not.